This column by Jack Hassard is referenced in the previous post by Edward Johnson of Atlanta.
I missed it when it first appeared. I am posting it now because it contains important advice, not only for Georgia, but for other states whose governors want to copy New Orleans and the Tennessee Achievement School District (which so far has not achieved its lofty goal of moving the lowest performing schools in the state to the top 25% of schools in the state). The model legislation comes right from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the rightwing organization that promotes privatization and deregulation for the benefit of corporations.
Hassard writes:
The Opportunity School District, which was proposed by Governor Nathan Deal, is indeed an opportunity. But it is not in the best interests of students and their families in the communities identified as having “chronically failing schools.” The first detail to pull out of Senate Bill 133 is that this bill is nothing short of opening the flood gates for charter schools, which have been documented time and again as not nearly being as effective as “regular” public schools. These schools will replace public schools that have been red-flagged for three consecutive years. The main goal of school will be to get students to score higher on standardized tests. Success will hinge primarily on the test scores in mathematics and reading. Teaching to the test will be the main goal of schooling in the OSD.
In this Senate bill, paragraph after paragraph is devoted to describing how the state will set up a state-wide charter school district for “chronically failing schools.” But here is a real problem for Georgia legislators to consider. The evidence from the New Orleans Recovery School District is that for the most part, schools that were considered failing before they entered the confines of the RSD continued to earn failing grades, stars, or flags–pick your own symbol.
What Governor Deal does not confront is the connection between poverty and test scores. As Hassard shows in another post, 27% of the children in the state of Georgia live in poverty, and nearly 60% are eligible for free- or reduced-price school lunches.
Creating a special school district for the schools attended by children who live in poverty is a high priority for ALEC, but it does nothing to alleviate the lives of these children or to improve their schools. It amounts to kicking the can down the road. It will take a decade to recognize that this remedy didn’t remedy anything that matters. It just delayed the reckoning with the cause of low test scores: high poverty.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Truth in advertising would dictate Opportunist School Destruct …
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So very stealthily, Achievement, Opportunity, Recovery school districts are being pushed in SC, NC, and GA. Do I smell some StudentsFirst rotting fish?
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It’s weird that such a local, bottom-up “movement” has these giant national political campaigns where they drop the same plan into every city, isn’t it?
Also? All of the “experiments” work. All of them. Often before they’re launched!
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Yup, those StudentsFirst folks are just so grassroots. That’s how they hire the fresh faced outreach coordinators who apparently can’t get jobs anywhere else.
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“Often before they’re launched!”
That’s the only time they work.
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Jack Hassard article stated, “What Governor Deal does not confront is the connection between poverty and test scores. …It just delayed the reckoning with the cause of low test scores: high poverty.
There are many causes of low test scores. Raising test scores shouldn’t be our goal. There are ways of raising tests scores which are unethical. Our aim should be providing experiential learning experiences which comes in many shapes and forms. I have become a broken record. As James Coleman’s research revealed that the most significant variable was the family. Of course we know that teachers are important
– Goodlad noted it in “The Place Called School.” Good teaching makes a difference.
Poverty is powerful but people have over come poverty and achieved. We have many
caregivers on welfare. The govt. should provide programs for these caregivers that they must attend to become informed on how to help those in their care learn and achieve academically. Parents/caregivers have to become involved with their children’s learning experiences and most importantly reading to the children in their care. The schools can’t do it all. Common Core and its high stakes testing only hinders real progress. Take the money wasted on CC and testing and support programs that will have a positive impact.
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A dissenter!
“While Philamplify offered high praise for Walton’s environmental giving, pointing to “powerful and lasting results,” it said the funder’s overreliance on a market-based approach hinders its education program. Although Walton funding has fueled the expansion of quality charter schools, expanding the range of schooling options for individual students and families, the funder has failed to achieve systemic, equitable reforms in public education, Philamplify concluded.
This echoes many critics’ misgivings about the market-based approach to education reform supported by Walton and like-minded organizations. Critics concede that this approach changes the K-12 landscape by introducing new players into the system, but also point out that it largely sidesteps the challenge of improving existing public schools.
Scant evidence exists to substantiate these claims. Even a longtime Walton grantee acknowledged to Philamplify that market competition has little influence over education. The recent decision by Walton itself to reduce its involvement in Milwaukee — once the epicenter of the school choice movement — after years of disappointing results would seem to further underscore the drawbacks of this theory.”
These people aren’t getting any more grants, that’s for sure 🙂
http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2015/6/17/in-case-you-missed-it-a-hard-hitting-critique-of-the-walton.html
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Reblogged this on rjknudsen and commented:
Sounds like the “Cincinnati Accelerator”
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This goes along with the current climate found throughout much of the US where discrimination is rampant to the point where murder is the “victims fault”.
And Isn’t that what is happening in education – poor test results are the teacher’s fault, (not due to problems beyond the school’s control)?
Scape goating is alive and well.
There must be a law suit in there somewhere.
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